As the frontman for heavy duty California rock band Korn, Jonathan Davis has turned angst into an art form, and has sold an impressive 32 million albums worldwide since the group's inception in 1993. Having battled addiction and long-term depression, much of the inspiration for Davis lyrics has come from internal demons. But right now hes making noise about an external issue that will likely affect us all in some way the April 20th drilling explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Owned by Transocean but leased and operated by BP, the disaster at the rig appears to be caused, at least in part, by the oil giants concern for profits above safety. Channeling his anger at the companys culpability into action, Davis is the instigator behind a boycott of BPs products by a coalition of touring bands. Initially it consisted mostly of those on the traveling Mayhem Festival bill, which Korn are currently co-headlining, however the coalitions ranks have rapidly swelled and now include artists such Lady Gaga, Anthrax, Backstreet Boys, Maroon 5 and Filter.

Though the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, the human and environmental issues it raises are far closer to home for Davis. He was born and raised in Bakersfield, a city within the borders of Kern County, CA, which has the dubious honor of being the largest oil producing county in the US. Though rich in oil, eighteen percent of Bakersfields population lives below the poverty line. The city also ranks as one of the least educated in the nation.

Music was a way out for Davis, but his ties to his hometown remain strong, as evidenced by the first single off Korns new album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are. The track is called Oildale (Leave Me Alone) and is named after a suburban town 3.5 miles northwest of downtown Bakersfield. Surrounded by oil wells, Davis calls Oildale the most impoverished, fucked-up place I think I've ever been to. Though this statement is anecdotal, if the video for Oildale which was shot there is anything to go by, it's clear the place could do with benefiting a little more from its oil wealth.

SuicideGirls caught up with Davis shortly after he came off stage after performing at the Mayhem Festival in Idaho. Talking the day after the new albums release (Korn III: Remember Who You Are has since debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 sales chart), we spoke about life, music, organized religion, close encounters of the crop circle making kind, and his hope that his wrath for big petroleum will prove to be contagious.

Andrea Larrabee: How did the BP boycott come about?

Jonathan Davis: That thing started out, for me, just seeing what was going on. I was just disgusted with that company. Myself, personally, I wasn't going to buy any of their products. I told my management about it and they're like, well, let's boycott it if you feel that strongly about it. So we started the whole boycott just to send a message to those companies. If enough people don't buy their products then they'll feel it. We're not going to put them out of business or anything, it's just [about] trying to say that you need to be held accountable for destroying these people's lives. Why didn't [they] spend that extra money to make sure that this didn't happen? Hopefully by us doing that - and we're getting more and more bands that are joining everyday - it'll send a message to those oil companies to spend the money to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because it's only one well - there's hundreds of them in that gulf, and thousands in the whole word. They need to be held accountable to make sure the safety measures are there.

AL: This kind of corner-cutting seems to be something that's endemic in the whole industry. I don't know if you remember the Exxon Valdez spill that happened 21 years ago.

JD: Well BP, basically if they'd have spent seven million more dollars and two more days this would have never have happened. It's just them being cheap.

AL: What do you mean by that?

JD: It came out on air that if they'd have used a more expensive - the proper - concrete, which would have cost seven million more bucks and an extra two days for them to pour it, that that wouldn't have happened. All that stuff, it's just retarded.

AL: If we're going to prevent anything like this happening again in the future we have to penalize BP today as a deterrent for other companies who might be tempted to put profits above safety. And it feels like BP have left us to clear up their social and environmental mess, while their priority clean up-wise appears to be sucking up the oil so they can sell it.

JD: Yeah. Like they had the idea to funnel it into a tanker. They're worried about the fucking oil and not the people [whose livelihoods] they've destroyed. I mean they've got more money than god - we'll just pay everybody and everything will be fine. But there's no amount of money that these people could get. Some of those places [that have been affected] have been around for hundreds of years. They've been passed down from family to family - like this oyster factory on the gulf coast I saw. This guy, his dad gave it to him, and his grandfather, and his grandfather before that. It's been like a hundred years. And they're going to have to close their doors because they don't know what's going to happen, if the oysters are going to be ruined forever.

AL: Knowing what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster gives me huge cause for concern with regards to this spill. I mean those affected by Exxon Valdez were originally awarded a $5 billion settlement, but the oil company, because they had deep pockets and they could, appealed and appealed against it. After being held up in court for years, the settlement was ultimately reduced to $507 million, and it took two decades for the first payments to reach those who were entitled to it, by which time people had committed suicide, succumbed to illness caused by the pollution, and their livelihoods and those of their children had been destroyed. The money got there way too late to help, and it just seems like the same thing is going to play out this time.

JD: It probably will because those companies are untouchable. Obviously the government's not going to do anything about it because [the politicians] make back door deals with them. The bottom line is oil is our life. Our wars are fought over it. Everything is surrounded by this stupid fucking brown shit that comes out of the earth...[It's something that] everybody has a vested interest in so it's up to the people - us - not just sit by and let shit happen and depend on our government to work it out. It's on us to do something.

AL: You talk about oil being our lives, but really the wealth generated by it only benefits a tiny percentage of already obscenely wealthy Americans. I had a very profound experience a few years ago when I went to Norway for the ya Festival. While I was there I learned that a massive percentage of the country's oil wealth goes back to the people. The money pays for health care, social services, education, and the arts. Meanwhile, the oil companies drilling in California don't have to pay any royalties to the local or federal governments - even though the oil is being sucked from beneath land that belongs to all of us. And we have a bankrupt state.

JD: I know, it's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. There's countries in Europe and all around the world, people got it together. It just seems like here, in the States, it's so fucked up. I see it first hand because in the town I live in, where we did the "Oildale" video, there's hundreds of pumps around in Oildale but it's the most impoverished, fucked-up place I think I've ever been to. All these people who live near the oil fields, they don't receive anything. They're poor, it's overrun with drugs, it's disgusting, and if we [got] something out of it it'd be amazing. Just the fact that in Norway, they've got social services, art, everything - fuck! I want to move to Norway.

AL: When someone wants to put an oil well in our backyard or off our coast, we're always told the local economy needs it and it's going to bring wealth to the community. But here in America, very rarely does the local community substantially profit.

JD: None of them profit. It sucks the life out of [them].

AL: The sad thing is that those in Alaska are better off than those in Oildale, Kern County, CA. At least the residents of Alaska are getting checks from the oil companies at the end of the year. What's going on in California in that respect is worse than Alaska - worse than Sarah Palin territory if that's possible!

JD: It is. It's fucking horrible...It's so simple, make these companies pay for the oil they're pumping out and give [the money] back to the government or the community.

AL: These oil companies do seem to operate above the law, and above governments. Do you have any hope that this boycott will actually have any real effect?

JD: I hope it does. I mean I saw a report that BP's sales were down in places anywhere from ten to forty percent. I hope they go down more. I hope people get pissed off. I mean they've got lots of money and it's going to affect them in some way. They should be held accountable. I'd love to see them be put the fuck out of business. It's just unfair. It's just really unfair that a company can do that and get away with it. And the [Exxon] settlements that have taken fucking two decades, it's just a horrible situation all the way around.

AL: The boycott started out with you and the bands on the Mayhem Tour, but it's since spread with artists such as Lady Gaga signing up. Who are the most recent additions?

JD: I haven't seen the latest list. I know Disturbed and a lot of hard rock acts have come on board.

AL: What kind of messages of support have you been getting from the other artists involved?

JD: We're getting people saying why don't you do a concert or something like that. But those concerts don't really make that much money, and with everybody's scheduling, the best solution we have now is as simple as not buying their products.

AL: Well it's a kind of democracy that you can practice everyday. You vote everyday with your dollars.

JD: Yeah, so the biggest thing anyone can do is take their money away from them.

AL: So would you also ask that your fans boycott BP?

JD: I would totally urge them to do that. It's a decision that they have to make. I'm not into really political shit, to me it's about seeing the environment and people being hurt. It's more coming from a human standpoint. I think if you're human and you actually see what's going on down there, you'll feel compelled to not buy their shit.

AL: Could you see yourself at some point taking the Willie Nelson route and using vegetable oil?

JD: In a perfect world, yes. But out here it's hard to find it when you're going from town to town. What needs to happen is it needs to be available at every station. If you could go to any station and pump vegetable oil into your car, it'd be easy and I think everyone would do it.

AL: The new album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are, I know that the original concept for it, which you've since deviated from, was to explore the themes of the five symbols of the downfall of man. In interviews you listed them as being organized religion, drugs, power, money and time, but I would also add oil to that list as a factor in the downfall of man.

JD: Yeah, I would too.

AL: Oil is probably responsible for as many, if not more wars than religion. Often people substitute the word religion for oil because fighting in the name of religion is more palatable then oil.

JD: Yeah, definitely, it is. It's a fucked up world we live in. I wish we could just get it right.

AL: So the new album, it was released yesterday?

JD: Yes.

AL: How's that been going?

JD: It's been going great. Everyone that's got it that I've ran into is really loving it. We're very proud of it. It was very hard for me and Rey [Luzier] and the band to make, mentally, the stuff we went through. But musically and the way we recorded it was more [about] going back to the old school way of doing things. We recorded it on two-inch tape, no Pro Tools or click tracks or any of that shit. It seems like music in general has become so dependent on all these machines to make everything perfect that music has lost its soul. We did it the old fashioned way. That's what we wanted to do. It was so amazing making it, hearing it the old way, and hearing the music breathe and the tempos fluctuate around the vocals. It gave it its own kind of soul. So we were very, very happy about it.

AL: Tempo fluctuations are so important. A song should speed up when you're heading into a chorus because you're so excited about getting there. To not have that emotion expressed with a natural tempo shift means you're killing some of the very excitement that you're trying to create.

JD: Yes. It just takes the emotion out of it. And we did some simple little things, like I sang all the choruses and it's all just one voice. There's some backing voice just to lift up the choruses here and there, but I haven't done that in years. I'm used to using a stack of vocals and getting them tuned and all this stuff. I totally fell into that hole, and it sucks. People are just relying on technology so much it's taken the human out of everything.

AL: In the lyrics and in your vocals you can definitely hear very raw emotion.

JD: Yeah, you can feel it. Now if I'd have done that same shit and done three or four vocals on it, it would have took away from that. That's what I love about listening to the record, you can feel the emotion on every chorus and every little thing that's different each time around. It makes for an enjoyable listen.

AL: Lyrically, which tracks are closest to home emotionally?

JD: All ten of them are. [laughs] I swear. If you knew the fucking shit I went through making this. It was basically me and [producer] Ross [Robinson]. It was one big purging of me trying to figure out what makes me so unhappy all the time. And I came up with big topics like people pleasing, or guilt, and just living in the past. All these things I figured out working with him that were sparking me to start writing.

AL: I know that you're suffered from depression for a long time and that you are self-identifying pathological people pleaser. It must be really hard to feel so compelled to please when you have a ton of people hanging around you because of the very nature of the industry you're in.

JD: Yeah. It drives me crazy. I mean I put myself out there and sacrifice myself to make them happy. I'm trying and I'm learning as time goes on to stop that, and I'm learning to be able to say no. That's hard for me but I'm doing all right. It's a work in progress.

AL: I have a terrible time saying no. Someone will ask me to do something and I'll say no in my head but I'll hear my voice saying yes, because I don't want to ever upset anyone or appear like an asshole. How do you get past that to learn to say no when you need to?

JD: You've just got to jump in and do it. Like with swimming or anything else, you just do it. It's not going to be as bad as you think it's going to be. It really isn't, and it feels good. Just stick to your guns and you feel kind of a weight lifted off your shoulders.

AL: You also debuted Korn Live: The Encounter recently which features concert footage shot amidst a crop circle.

JD: Yeah. It was a TV show on HDNet that we did and it was one of the most amazing things that we've ever participated in. We're huge fans of Pink Floyd's Live at Pompei and we kind of used that as a template for it. We had circle makers come out from the UK. They stomped out a crop circle and we did a show in the middle of it. And something happened, we started jamming between songs and it just turned into one big jam concert with our new songs and some old songs. Looking at it, it's just amazing.

AL: So you took all your gear and a generator out into the middle of a field?

JD: Yeah, basically, we did. Our stuff, the generators and lights. It was the most insane load-in I ever saw because we didn't have enough plywood. When you're in a wheat field they have ditches for irrigation lines for where the water comes through, so it's not level ground. Everything's on wheels and these poor guys were out in a hundred degree heat just busting their asses to get everything in there and [trying not to] destroy the crop circle in the process. It was a huge undertaking but we pulled it off.

AL: Obviously if you're bringing in world-renowned crop circle artists into the mix on camera you're taking the supernatural element out of crop circles. Did you ever believe that extra terrestrials were involved in their creation?

JD: When nobody knew what was going on, sure. Because like how can someone do that? But when you see how they do it, how easy it is to actually make a crop circle. The guy took me out and I actually did my own crop circle, and they're relatively easy to do.

AL: That's so funny. I remember when they first started turning up, you'd get all these experts talking on TV about how difficult to near impossible it would be for a human to create these things.

JD: [laughs] I know, and it's so fucking simple. All it is is a measuring tape and a four-foot board with a rope - three simple tools. It's hard pushing that wheat over. I mean it's work, but relatively, I saw how easy it was to make, and if you've got a couple of guys you can just knock it out pretty quick. I mean the circle makers did it in one day, that whole big thing.

AL: You're famously very anti organized religion. Do you wish that debunking religion was as easy as debunking the myths behind crop circles?

JD: Yeah. Any kind of organized religion I can't stand because it's just another fucking con business. I see it. I mean I worked closely with them when I worked as a funeral director back when I was a kid. I saw how corrupt [it was] and how fucking it's just one big show. But it's something necessary. Over the years I've watched, people need hope and something they believe in. So if it affects them in a positive way, then good. I'm not going to sit here and judge them and say they're assholes. It's just something that's not for me.

AL: Well I can understand it, because working at a funeral home you must have seen them reach into people's pockets when they're at their most vulnerable.

JD: Oh yeah. And then I had this Catholic priest try to tell I was gay and sleep with me, and it was just all this crazy shit.

AL: Was that at school?

JD: No, that was when I was a funeral director.

AL: I know that you've been sober for many years. Did you do the Twelve Step program which demands that you invite a higher power into your life?

JD: No. I know it works for some people. Some people need that. Some of these Twelve Step programs are just another substitute for addiction. They really push god on people, or a higher power, which I understand. You need something when you're doing it. But I had friends that had gone through it, and it's really like a fucking cult. All these people telling you, you can't hang out with this person because they drink and it's going to make you relapse. And the whole thing with how they treat alcohol or any kind of drug addiction as a disease - it's bad, you're always going to be an addict, you're always, bad, bad, bad, bad, without any positive kind of reinforcement - it just wasn't for me. So when I quit, I stopped in one day and I never looked back. For me, I just think about all the things I would lose if I was to drink or do drugs again. I mean I've got children, I've got a beautiful wife, family, and all that would go away - and that's more important to me than getting fucked up.

AL: How many years has it been now?

JD: August 22nd, it'll be twelve years.

AL: Congratulations. Do you still get the urge?

JD: Every day. Every day. 'Cause I'm out here on the road and everybody's partying and drinking. I surrounded myself with that. Actually I'd say the first eight or nine years I was in the party chopping up lines, making drinks for people. It's more about the ritual. I was enjoying the ritualistic side of it, but not seeing the people in the morning, how they're hurting. [I like] not being like that guy.